I have been writing for Forbes since 2005. Prior to that I covered the business beat for the New York Daily News. Because I've studied both finance and journalism, and because I like both numbers & analysis and sports, what's a more fun job than merging the two, writing about sports from the business side and from the stat geek/number crunching side? I have a BS in business from Boston College and a masters in business journalism from New York University.

What Makes a Hall of Fame Pitcher? The Voters Don't Get It

What does a pitcher have to do to get into the Hall of Fame? In many cases, win 300 games. The unfortunate part: wins by themselves mean very little, leaving a lot of deserving pitchers on the outside looking in.

The Hall class of 2014 has been voted on: Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, both 300-game winners, are in (slugger Frank Thomas is in, too, but we’re going to stick with pitching here). Jack Morris, the subject of much attention during his last year on the ballot, is out, coming up short with 61.5% of the vote (75% is needed).

Both Glavine and Maddux are obvious choices. But so too were Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, and , to a lesser extent, Morris. Why? Because, it’s not about how many games you win, it’s about how you pitch. Los Angeles-based baseball writer Ken Gurnick stirred up some controversy this week when he announced that Morris was his only vote this year. He apparently wanted to aid Morris’s cause with some added attention. Fine, except that Gurnick gave the wrong reasons for supporting him. A snippet of his statement:

He gets my vote for more than a decade of ace performance that included three 20-win seasons, Cy Young Award votes in seven seasons and Most Valuable Players votes in five.

It’s a rationale common to most Hall voters. But here’s the problem: none of those things rates as a performance metric in any way. Wins are a by-product of run support. Cy Young and MVP votes are just that – votes. They’re writers’ opinions. A pitcher can’t control any of these factors. Three 20-win seasons? What’s magical about 20, as opposed to 19? Morris pitched far better for the 1985 Tigers, an average team for whom he won 16 games, than he did for the champion 1992 Blue Jays, for whom he won 21 games.

Maddux’s mesmerizing win total is an indicator of his career performance, not a cause. It’s derived from how well he pitched, how long he pitched, and the quality of the team around him. You don’t need the win total to see his domination, which is already factored into his other stats -5,000 innings, 3,300 strikeouts and a 3.16 career ERA (and much lower in his prime).

What a pitcher can control are the factors that actually measure his effectiveness – how many innings he’s giving each year, how many hitters he’s striking out, and how well he’s keeping the opposition off the base paths and the scoreboard. Morris certainly qualifies in some of those areas – he surpassed 200 innings 11 times (and hit at least 197 two other times), and 200 strikeouts three times. Morris ranks in the all-time top 50 for innings and strikeouts.

Of course, statistical norms change from era to era. A good way to assess a pitchers’ dominance: compare his major stats (innings, ERA, strikeouts, walks, hits allowed) to the league norm in each season, and consider his won-lost record not in absolute terms, but against the record of his teams. A little analysis shows that on that basis, Morris ranks as the 68th best pitcher of all time, just ahead of Chuck Finley and Bob Welch and just behind Sam McDowell, Mark Langston, Jimmy Key, Jerry Koosman and Luis Tiant.

Maddux, incidentally, comes in at No. 5 all time; Glavine at No. 26.

So you see the dilemna. Given the many thousands of pitchers who have started major league games, a No. 68 all-time ranking is certainly Hall of Fame worthy. So the Veterans Committee ought to correct the BBWAA’s snub and vote Morris in. Yet, a slew of pitchers who rate even higher than Morris remain out, with nary a whisper of support.

The long list includes Rick Reuschel (No. 36), Dave Stieb (No. 37), Brett Saberhagen (No. 48) Frank Tanana (No. 52) and Vida Blue (No. 54). That’s before you get to the truly dissed duo of Schilling (No. 19) and Mussina (No. 21), generally considered borderline Hall of Famers but who ought to be slam dunks. Voters only mildly impressed with Schilling’s 216 career wins might want to take note of the fact that he turned in winning records for losing Phillies teams five separate times in the 1990s, and then went 111-57 for Arizona and Boston during his final eight seasons.

There are not a ton of pitchers in the Hall of Fame – the elections of Glavine and Maddux brings the total to 77 beginning with the inaugural class of 1936. Only 40 of those 77 cross over onto our analytical top 77. So we’d say that Hall of Fame voters get it about 50% right. Interesting is the breakdown: 28 of our top 35 are in the Hall, but only 12 of our next 42 are. So beyond the most obvious choices lies the divide. In addition to those already mentioned, we’d point to the numbers to campaign for Kevin Brown, Tommy John, Kevin Appier, Ron Guidry and Mickey Lolich, among several others. And by numbers, we mean those that a pitcher can control. Baseball’s statistical revolution can’t come fast enough.

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As a long-time voter, I understand your point, Tom. Maybe they should start a sabermetrics Hall of Fame for you number-crunching geeks. I personally don’t think Felix Hernandez should have won the Cy Young Award with a 13-12 record. But I’m old school. Wins matter to me in evaluating pitchers. Call me old-fashioned. Hey, Steve Carlton won 27 games for one of the worst teams of all time. How did he do that? By the way, the writer’s name is Ken Gurnick, not Kevin. Best, Dave.

Great point on Ken Gurnick, David. As for wins – eh. I don’t discount wins entirely but measure them against the team. As it happens I do rate Carlton’s 1972 season as the best ever, in part for winning 27 games on a 59-win team but just as much for his 300 innings and 1.98 ERA. As for King Felix, 13-12 for a 101-loss team, while leading the the league in innings, strikeouts and WHIP, and 2nd in strikeouts? Cy Young hands down baby.

He won 27 games by having an ERA of 1.90 (ERA+ 182) while the team averaged 3.75 runs per game in his starts . He was an amazing pitcher with an ERA 1.85 runs better than the average output of the offense in his starts.

Felix Hernandez went 13-12 with an ERA of 2.27 (ERA+ 174) while the team averaged 3.00 runs per game in his starts.

Felix wasn’t as good as Carlton but the Phillies offense did more for Carlton than what Felix got from the Mariners.

Roger Clemens was 20-3 in 2001 and won the Cy Young Award for that year. This despite not completing a single game and having an earned run average of 3.51. He won most of those games because the Yankees beat the crap out of the ball and the bullpen was good. Freddy Garcia, who actually pitched some complete games and won the earned run title for that year, had a much better season.

I’d say that Mike Mussina had an even better year than Freddy Garcia and Clemens in 2001.

Mussina was 17-11 with a 3.15 ERA with a WAR of 7.1. Run Support: 4.12 Clemens was 20-3 with a 3.51 ERA with a WAR of 5.6. Run Support: 5.88

David, you think Clemens is the better pitcher that season because he won 20 games? The Yankees game him 1.76 runs per game more than Mussina but it is somehow Mussina’s fault that he didn’t win 20 games?

No, agree with you on 2001 but do you think Sale had a better year than Scherzer last year? No. And I don’t care what the run support, or WAR, was. There are more variables than just run support guys. There’s how good the BP is, how good the defense is and how long the manager is willing to go with his starters. You can’t calculate everything and boil it down to numbers.

Then you’ve got the NL in 2004, when Clemens undeservedly won the Cy Young over Randy Johnson, who completely dominated the league. Johnson goes 16-14 for an Arizona club that went 51-111, but Clemens gets the Cy for going 18-4 with Houston. Ridiculous.

But those things are out of the pitcher’s control. A pitcher can adjust for some factors of a BP but not all. As for managers, remember when Preston Gomez removed pitchers who were throwing no-hitters? He did it three times. Nowadays, managers yank pitchers after seven innings regardless of the kind of game they are throwing. Those become intangibles that vary from team to team and from manager to manager. They are very hard to quantify.

For you to dismiss the possibility that Sale pitched close to same level as Scherzer because he didn’t have as many Ws as Scherzer is ludicrous thinking. You claim that you don’t care about run support but that has a direct correlation to how many Ws a pitcher is able to get.

2.90 ERA vs 3.07 in the same number of IP so the difference in ERA is 4 runs over 214.1 IP. Sale even made 2 less starts so he went deeper in games than Scherzer. Scherzer had 14 more Ks but 10 more walks. Their performances were very close last season.

Wins are a TEAM STATISTIC that were arbitrarily assigned to pitchers years ago and it is a very flawed way to judge which pitcher is better. The magic 20-game winner that voters hang their hats on is an old-fashioned way of thinking.

Great, well-reasoned piece. Curious about the data-crunching that went into this, though:

“A good way to assess a pitchers’ dominance: compare his major stats (innings, ERA, strikeouts, walks, hits allowed) to the league norm in each season, and consider his won-lost record not in absolute terms, but against the record of his teams. A little analysis shows that on that basis, Morris ranks as the 68th best pitcher of all time.”

Is this drawn from a public list? If not, possible to share a few more details about the formula that you devised? (For the record, I’m a fan of any statistical evidence that demonstrates Mike Mussina is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer.)

Baseball Prospectus is one of the most respected sites for baseball statistical analysis. 41 of their writers just posted their hypothetical HOF ballots and exactly 0 would have voted for Morris. Morris’s case ends with his 3.90 ERA, which, adjusted for park and era, is only 5% better than the average pitcher. There are only three members of the HOF with a worse park and era adjusted ERA, Catfish Hunter at 4% better, a guy from the deadball era, and a guy from the 1800s.

Good points, Horace, but did you see Jack Morris pitch? He was a “bulldog” on the mound. He “pitched to the score” which is why his ERA was so high. That 10-inning game in the World Series is “ALL that matters.”

I hope you caught the sarcasm in my previous comments. Jack Morris had a 3.80 ERA in the postseason. He had a chance to clinch the WS for Toronto in 1992 and had the following line: 4.2IP, 9H, 7ER, 1BB, 5K. Real clutch. JM is so far from a HOF’er that it is laughable.